10 Weirdest Mind-Blowing Wrestling Facts (According To Reddit)
Fact or fiction? Just when wrestling has the answers, Reddit changes the question.
Wrestling forums sure were a time.
It'd be too easy to say "you had to be there", but for those either too young or simply too unbothered by the minutiae of online discourse at the time, it's hard to find the words to describe the inherent magic of a really good (or appallingly bad) wrestling forum.
Thriving before social media platforms asset stripped them of users and divided up posts into one-liners, images or awkward conversations with your relatives on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook respectively, forums brought together mostly anonymised human life who took an interest in mostly niche hobbyist culture. In the days of clearer lines between the mainstream and counter-culture, these open and conversational hubs became vital online meeting places for fans of things that simply weren't going to get discussed amongst the masses.
All of this is to say; Reddit could and should be much less of a toxic waste dump than it is. Forums were typically self-regulated and did a better job of squeezing out the monsters while coaching others into having decorum, grace and - at a minimum - a moderate grasp of spelling and grammar.
As the closest thing keeping forums on everything alive, billionaire-backed Reddit should be better. r/SquaredCircle especially. But when it's good...
(Credit/blame for the below to all the Redditors featured here)
10. Steve Blackman Nearly Died Of Malaria Before His WWE Run
Steve Blackman was and is hard as f*ck, but he was given one of the toughest battles of his life long before he broke through in WWE in late 1997.
Ironically, it was during his first attempt at Titan Superstardom that a health concern outside of the ring almost took away his livelihood. After working for Stampede Wrestling in the mid-1980s, he was on the verge of scoring a full-time contract following some brief television appearances until he contracted near-fatal malaria during a tour of South Africa in 1989. It left him confined to a bed for almost two years, with the damage done to his health, size and mobility enough to put paid to his hopes and dreams of ever making it in such a physically demanding trade.
Until he did, because he's hard as f*ck and wasn't going to take no for an answer. In some sweet circular synergy, it was Stampede cornerstones Owen Hart and Brian Pillman that helped him back through the door.